


The S.P.E.C.K.S Initiative

by dragoninthesunlesssky



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: #inspirationfromEOS10, #mightadditin?idk, F/F, F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), Other, Outer Space, POV Multiple, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-23 04:25:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16611905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninthesunlesssky/pseuds/dragoninthesunlesssky
Summary: As Cutter lies, marinating in his own blood, on board whatever remains of the U.S.S Hephaestus, he's thankful that before he left for the treachery of deep space, he already put in place a plan B.However, that 'Plan B' isn't as pleasant as he wished it'd be, and as soon as he's whisked to safety, he's dragged into something he didn't quite expect.((there'll be flashbacks and flashforwards where we get to see diff characters so heyo)





	1. Dust and Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter recalls a song in a bid to rid his mind of the matter at hand.

_Is this how I die?_

 

_Ridiculed and laughed at._

 

_Wearing clown shoes._

 

_Is this how I die?_

 

_Furious and reckless..._

 

The melancholic piano keys reverberated in Cutter's head, the song playing like a broken record in his brain as he tried to recall the melody. "Neumann, actually." Cutter chuckled out loud, to nobody in particular.

 

He wondered if he  _was_ Neumann anymore. 

 

"Of course I have an identity crisis in my dying moments." He groaned, softly, almost gurgling. 

 

He never noticed how very cold the metal floors were. He was lucky that the harpoon hadn't completely gone through him and clung to the grimey dirt-ridden ground.  _How did the Hephaestus crew accomplish anything here if they couldn't even give the floors a good clean?_  His eyes began to fixate on the blindingly white light emanating from the fluorescent bulb plugged into the ceiling. 

 

He recalled the last time he got stabbed. It had been a while. But more often than not those were surface-level scratches. Gashes at worst. Nothing quite like a harpoon. 

He recalled getting slashed in the stomach with the twig of a wine cup. Twig? The... stand? 

Language was failing him.

Cutter felt himself panic for a second. 

 

"Calm. Calm. So very calm." He exhaled, still lying flat, trying not to move or do anything that might even _slightly_ raise his heart rate. But of course, like breathing, once you are made aware of it, you automatically do the opposite of what you were supposed to do - like inhale, exhale, or, don't panic and don't let your heart start pounding like a set of bongos at a... a...

He tried to think of where in the world he would find bongos. 

He didn't usually let his train of thought get quite so derailed but he thought being impaled was a good enough cause for an exception.

His chest tightened, stinging as his muscles clenched against the metallic rod that extended upwards in an uncomfortable manner. I mean, being impaled is relatively uncomfortable enough, but he figured that it was doubly cruel for the harpoon to slowly push deeper as it slid downwards because of that funny thing called gravity. To be fair, it was artificial gravity. But the point stands.  

The rod, seemingly awakened by Cutter's **_distinct_ **distaste for being skewered, merely sunk further into his ribs, cracking him open like a crab at a seafood restaurant. 

_Why... crab?_

Cutter furrowed his eyebrows, disturbed by his own anecdotes. 

 

In an attempt to not let his dying moments be pining over a seafood diner that served coagulated clam chowder with rubbery croutons and crunchy clams with a whole crab (unopened and without utensils being provided to go about doing so, such that when he even attempted to eat any form of meat, he had to bite into it, only to be told that it was 'just for show' and his 'actual crab would be coming in a bit' and that 'i don't know how you mistook a ceramic crab for a real one but you really did do him in didn't you'), he was in a weird spot at the bright young age of 42, Cutter decided to take **_any form of action_**   that did  _ **not**_ involve crabs, diners, or a failing grasp of the English language. 

 

With a tremendous gush of effort, Cutter raised his back slightly, trying to move the wound up, only to come crashing a millimeter down which, to the average, unimpaled, human, was not much of a significant distance, it wasn't even insignificant. Attempt to find a word that describes insignificance on a greater scale. 

Cutter scanned his brain for a word. 

Nothing came to mind. 

He continued his train of thought. 

However, to an 80 plus year old with a harpoon dangling recklessly out of his body, that milimetre wasn't so much of a trivial unit of distance as it was a horrific drop into the caverns of the unknown deep in a radioactive wasteland. 

_Oddly specific._

 

 

He ogled the lights, wondering when he will ever find time to so... peacefully space out and gaze at nothing in particular again. 

 

Revenge wasn't an easy path. 

 

He sure was good at it though. 

 

"Apparently not anymore." He heard himself say. 

Although, he wasn't saying anymore. Each word dragged, each time his lip moved, he could feel the blood quivering to reach each capillary, as though it were climbing the Burj Khalifa's height in stairs. 

He sputtered, shocked at himself that he even  _dared_ attempt to speak. 

Especially when blood was so precious. 

Then again, speaking somehow calmed him down. 

It took his mind off everything that was happening neck-down. And considering the pros of calming himself against its cons, he decided a lowered heart rate but continuous lip action would be better than a raised heart rate. 

 

Ha. Two words rhymed in a row. 

 

He almost laughed, but he could feel is lungs trembling like a drenched puppy in nuclear winter. God, he was thinking about nuclear waste _a lot_. 

 

For once, he could  _feel_ his lungs. They weren't cooped up in his meat and cartilage cage anymore. They were free, cracked open for the world to observe. If the world were limited to his immediate vicinity and the fluorescent white light that kept him company. 

Not saying that the light wasn't in his immediate vicinity... but more so it stood out of his immediate vicininity.

_Vicininity._

_Vicininity._

 

"Ugh." Cutter couldn't even think without fumbling over his words. 

 

He felt his retinas burn like a campfire. 

He hoped that the light was just as blinding to the bacterium that was probably festering in his wound. 

 

He closed his eyes.

_Or should I open them?_

His eyelids flicked open again, but he felt them quiver back, enveloping him in a bed of darkness. 

Well, actually he had hoped for such reprieve, but when he closed his eyes, it wasn't dark as much as it was the cherry redness of his flesh because of the damned light. 

 

From friend to foe, the white light, in his dying moments, had too, betrayed him. 

 

Woe is me, traitorous foe. 

 

Woe is me. 

 

_So this is how my brain reacts to death. Bad poetry._

Neumann felt himself sink into the floor, but it was impossible to move any deeper. 

Maybe it was his soul, finally giving up on clinging to the misery of life. 

But was his soul similar to his mind? 

_It's the identity crisis again._

 

He so badly wanted to turn his head and catch a different view.

It was miserable and pathetic to die glazed in the unfeeling and cold brightness of his... "traitorous foe". 

 

Yet, he was sprawled in the hallway. Well, not sprawled. Even in death, Cutter had the dignity to lie down like a stick, parallel to both walls that obstructed his view of the vast blackness of space. He was already prepared for the coffin. 

 _Always one step ahead, aren't I_ _._

 

What a disgusting shade of silver. Cutter gazed at the shell of the ship, and as he caught his last glimpse at the poor craftsmanship on one panel a bit to the left of him, his eyelids gave out, slowly folding over his eyes. 

 

_Did I ever look up and see the moon?_

 

_The stars and the sky?_

 

_Oh why have I been sleeping..._

 

 

The lyrics suddenly hit him like a train, he imagined himself humming the tune, but even he knew his lungs could barely manage _pretending_ to muster a whimper. 

 

_Is this how I die?_

 

_Was there any ever other way my life could be?_

 

_Is this how I die?_

 

_Such a storm of feelings inside of me?_

 

He attempted to string the jumble of thoughts in his head... pulling out words from his weakening memory, each word lulling him into some form of sleep. 

 

_But then why am I screaming? Why am I shaking?_

 

_Oh God was there something that I missed?_

 

_Did I squander my... divini.... divinity..._

 

Cutter coughed out, mentally. Even _thinking_ now solicited a pained physical response. 

 

And in the moment, he didn't even hear the familiar stomp of leather boots, a voice calling out his name, not high pitched, not low pitched. Ambiguous, but relaxing, like the feeling of blood slowly oozing out of his body, like the yolk in a poached egg. 

 

_I want to wake up._

 

"Jesus Christ..." 

_Don't let me die while I'm like this._

 

"I would ask if you're okay but I see that's probably not going to be that... useful."

_Please let me wake up now._

 

"Okay Timothy fire up that surgical machine thingy, we're gonna need to work fast." 

_God, don't let me die while I'm like this._

 

"Hokay... you ready?"

_I'm ready..._

 

 

 

He felt his body being gingerly lifted before being slotted into the long surgical table that devoured him, encasing him in an airtight crucible of sorts, needles snaking out of a robotic appendage that, with its other limb, began to sterilise his wound.

 

 

 

_I'm ready_

_to wake up._


	2. Timothy

“Fuck you. Fuck all of you.” 

The floors were crawling with rats, walls painted in burgundy which was turning a vandyke brown - the same fluids that once resided in its host's body. 

"Too much? Did I strike a nerve? Emotionally? Literally?"

The man-like meat being was clad in a forest green cloak with painfully iridescent blue gemstones encrusted on his forehead that peaked out from under his hoodie. His flesh was white, pasty, with bright blue streaks that made him look like a zebra. 

Margo too looked like a zebra, but unlike her meaty friend, her colour palette was more in the crimson-peach range. 

By her side was a bottle of something hot pink -it looked like the fluid in glow-in-the-dark sticks you could get for a buck at some dingy tuck shop in chinatown. 

Oddly specific but that was beside the point. 

The liquid was dribbling down the sides of her mouth - she couldn't remember if she had vomited it out or if somebody else had forced it down her throat. 

"Last chance." 

"Right." 

The man-looking thing brandished a particularly mean-looking shard - something glowing, light purple, as rough as sandpaper and as strong as platinum. 

"Please."

The shard came down, striking the thin web-like flesh between her thumb and her index. 

"Mmfhp." A muffled cry of pain escaped Margo's lips. "If that's how we're playing..." She ripped out a metal rod from the metal grid under the table, holding it singlehandedly like a bat. 

Before she batted the being's head-shaped appendage clean off and into the metal wall, a particularly piercing and annoying voice erupted from her earpiece. 

 

"M-Margo?"

The alien grumbled. "Really?" he used his webbed hands that ended in orange and yellow bulb-like tips to reach down and nab one of the rats. 

"Shut up Timothy. I'm kind of in the middle of a thing."

The alien nodded, leaning back. "I'm in the middle of a thing." He mocked to Greg, the rat, endearingly patting her head. "Always in the middle of a thing... Never does the thing." He hissed, his snake-like tongue proceeding to hook onto Greg, picking out the fleas and mites on her back before chewing on them with his fangs in his eating mouth. For reference, he had two mouths. One eating mouth and one talking mouth. The eating mouth was somewhere on the back of his head with his "eye holes" (what Margo described the two indents in his head that allowed him to see." 

"Margo." The whine echoed, bordering on an unbearable screech. 

"Timothy if this isn't about the-"

"It's LITERALLY about the ONE thing we came here to do." 

Margo paused and pondered. 

"As in... the space station I'm at? Or...?"

" **The thing about your boss.** "

"I answer to no one." Margo said. Half joking, half dead serious.

" **CUTTER.** " The voice practically yelled, even alerting Greg who perked her head up, twitching her snout at Margo who dismissed the small being with a wave. 

 

Margo stood up from the chair, signalling to the weird alien thing to take off the cuffs on her left hand. 

"What about him?" She asked, tossing the metal rod behind her which, unsurprisingly, created a horrific clanging sound (yet for some reason, Margo was both alarmed and pissed at the sound created).

"Remember when he boarded a ship to space?"

"Mmhmm."

"And our ship was headed in that direction?"

"Mmhmm." 

"And you said 'he's got this'."

"Mmmmmmmmmm." Margo had a feeling he had not gotten it.

"And so you went in the opposite direction." 

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm." 

"And when he found out he made Pryce readjust your security commands so that you wouldn't run off."

"Oh! Yeah. That _was_ a good idea."

"Anddd you found a way to override them so you went in the opposite direction away." 

Margo sighed. "Curse my ingeniosity." 

"That's not... That's not a word." 

 

The alien perked up his head once he managed to jangle the lock into opening and stuffed the cuffs back into his pocket, reluctantly opening the heavy carbon door. 

"You gonna come back?" 

"Probably not. I'll direct a few pals here though. Got a card?" Margo said in a quick huff. 

The alien reached into his cloak and retrieved a light blue acrylic card, triangular with circular edges. He slipped into one of the pockets on Margo's dark blue bomber that she was forced to wear as part of protocol. The card plinked as it embedded itself in the jacket. 

"If this thing is a tracker I swear I will break every single bone that you didn't know you had in your boneless body." 

The alien winked. "That's the point."

"Ew."

Margo pushed herself out of the room, gazing up at the myriad of bright stars that she could see through the thick glass panels on the space station. 

 

"Timothy?" 

"The crew escaped on the Urania. Which I don't think is too ideal. But I see life in the Hephaestus. Which means..." 

"Which means we're fucked right? I mean, not us, Neumann's fucked."

Margo strolled down the streets, which were paved.  _ **Paved.**_ Way fancier than the previous station she holed herself up in. The floors were made of stones, all Victorian like. Every few metres she would walk past yet another food cart or florist selling all sorts of extraterrestrial delicacy - from Meseteo intestines to Intestine Mesteteos.

It was anybody's guess which was the food and which was the flower. 

 

"It could be anybody. But... judging from the cameras, it is kinda Cutter-shaped, sized, sou-" 

Margo plucked out the earpiece and attempted to adjust the sound - it was as grating as a walkie talkie.

"Yes yes that's all well and good." Margo tapped her feet against the stone ground she was marveling over seconds ago. She now noticed the weird way how her feet never seemed to be wholly on the ground, and that edges of the stones would uncomfortably press into her foot, squeezing her like an aunt you only see on Christmas day, joking about "how plump you've become". 

"Okay, um. We can... we can..." 

Margo paused. 

 

"There's no way around this is there? Neumann's just dead." 

"Margo!"

"Well he kinda wanted to kill everybody on earth so as far as I'm concerned... we're the good guys?"

" **WELL.** " Timothy... coughed? Odd for an A.I. to cough. Pryce had really gone all-out to make her A.I. more realistic. " _ **It's too bad you are contractually obligated to be a bad guy.**_ "

"Uh, Timothy, buddy? When have I ever stayed contractually obligated to any fucking thing?" 

She thought she heard Timothy purposefully sigh. 

"I think it's time to... make use of our guests." 

 

Margo widened her eyes. 

"No."

She pursed her lips, hastily making her way to the cargo bay. She knew as much as Timothy did that leaving in the "right" way would take wayyyy too long.  

"I mean, even for Neumann, that's overkill." 

She pressed her hands against the floor. 

_Magic time._

And like a ghost, her body moved through the floor, feet dangling above a crane-like machine of levers clicking and clacking away as white and fluorescent blue boxes moved along the ground, pulled by a magnetic force in different directions which the machine was controlling. 

 

She let go, wrapping her legs around the neck of the machine, sliding down its pole-like stand, and onto the ground. 

Like a squirrel, she scurried towards the line of docked ships. 

"Okay Timothy, where are you hiding?" 

"Plot #51-4A. I hope you're in the right sector." 

"I am, I am..." Her eyes drifted to the white neon letters " **3D** " glowing mockingly metres above her, "not. I am not." 

 

" **HURRY.** "

Margo glanced at the white boxes moving like roombas, skidding across the pristine floor. 

"Okay... okay..." She scanned the wave of boxes zooming too fast for her to read. 

Her eyes glanced at the black words painted onto the ground, mocking her too. 

"I'm an idiot." 

She huffed, hopping onto a particularly large block of cargo sailing along the lane that read _" **LANE TO 4A** "_. 

 

"How many minutes until vitals are down?"

"Not enough."

"Thanks Timothy! Inspiring!" 

"Well, unless we seek help, we aren't going to make it." 

Margo cursed through gritted teeth.

"You really aren't letting that go, are you?"

Margo shifted to her side as she began to reach the sector, skim reading the plot numbers.

_43,44,45,46,47,48..._

 

 

"Okay, I'm at 51." Margo tumbled off the cargo, dizzily grabbing onto a husk of a box for support. "Okay... What do I need to do?" 

"Just a handprint and emergency code and we'll be off." 

"Good, um." Margo apprehensively laid a hand on the green panel. "Emergency Leave for the T.I.A. Phalène, code Leopard, Ylvis, Benevolent, Dakota, Gypsy." 

A voice echoed from the panel. 

"Heyyyy see... you need to put in a formal message with administration before you take off.. soo... do that? Hun?" 

"Is this how you think humans speak?"

The voice from the panel cackled in some mangled attempt to sound human. 

"Darl, we're trying our best. Send a form to management." 

_" ** _Do_ I send a message to administration or a form to management, wom** **an?** " _

"Mighty rude of you to assume I'm a woman, sir. Also, I do _not_ appreciate the tone hon. Finally, either is fine. Just select "Admin/ Management" on the panel, press "Emergency Leave" and fill it out."

The voice was persistently upbeat. Which reminded Margo of the exact person she was doing all this to maybe perhaps save. 

"Okay, Okay."

 

Instinctively, Margo punched the panel, which fizzled and crackled in fiery, electrical, frustration. 

"I'm walking in." 

Timothy sighed, now through the speakers and not the earpiece. 

"You're sure you can do it to the ship?" Timothy said with a hint of concern. 

"Yeah, yeah. You'll know it when it's done."

 

The ship gently detached itself from the space station, every free object sliding to the right. 

"Oo. Feel that? Okay Timothy, rev up the engines." 

 

Timothy huffed. "You're forgetting how far away we are from the dwarf." 

"You take us in the right direction, I'll strike up the bargain. Got it?" 

"Mm..." Timothy expressed his concern. 

"GET. IT. I wasn't asking"

 

Margo headed off down the hall. 

_Neumann really fucked up this time didn't he?_

Her eyes glanced up and down the walls, locating the room. Not as though it would be hard to find, just that she had forgotten what the interior of the ship looked like - considering the fact that she had been off in a space station playing alien russian roulette for a few long weeks (Topinwa Lalouer - a hard to pronounce name of a game where all parties drink and threaten each other and beat each other for secrets the parties didn't know they had, all in order to see who could last the longest and tell the least secrets- it's a party game from a faraway planet that traveled from space station to space station and gained massive popularity - of course, until it started racking up a death count [which was when the intergalactic whatevers began to crack down on it, there wasn't exactly a president who managed these things, just a bunch of companies deciding what was best for intergalactic PR and whatnot] now, the game is played by a very certain group of licensed Lalouers, hard to find, and some just plain soft). 

 

Margo's eyes fell upon the door that had been bolted shut, a glimmering liquid seeping between the cracks in the wall. 

 

 

She knocked on the door, gulping.

Usually she had no qualms in harassing old friends to give her what she wanted, but this particular friend was... _different_. So to speak.

"Yes?"

A soothing voice ached from behind the door. 

"I need a favour." 

 

 

 


End file.
